The volume of a k-dimensional foliation $\mathcal{F}$ in a Riemannian manifold $M^{n}$ is defined as the mass of image of the Gauss map, which is a map from M to the Grassmann bundle of k-planes in the tangent bundle. Generalizing a construction by Gluck and Ziller, "singular" foliations by 3-spheres are constructed on round spheres $S^{4n+3}$, as well as a singular foliation by 7-spheres on $S^{15}$, which minimize volume within their respective relative homology classes. These singular examples provide lower bounds for volumes of regular 3-dimensional foliations of $S^{4n+3}$ and regular 7-dimensional foliations of $S^{15}$ .
Associated with isoparametric foliations of unit spheres, there are two classes of minimal surfaces $-$ minimal isoparametric hypersurfaces and focal submanifolds. By virtue of their rich structures, we find new series of minimizing cones. They are cones over focal submanifolds and cones over suitable products among these two classes. Except in low dimensions, all such cones are shown minimizing.
Singular Riemannian Foliations are particular types of foliations on Riemannian manifolds, in which leaves locally stay at a constant distance from each other. Singular Riemannian Foliations in round spheres play a special role, since they provide "infinitesimal information" about general Singular Riemannian Foliations. In this paper we show that Singular Riemannian Foliations in spheres, of dimension at most 3, are orbits of an isometric group action.
We show that a Riemannian foliation on a topological $n$-sphere has leaf dimension 1 or 3 unless n=15 and the Riemannian foliation is given by the fibers of a Riemannian submersion to an 8-dimensional sphere. This allows us to classify Riemannian foliations on round spheres up to metric congruence.
A smooth foliation of a Riemannian manifold is metric when its leaves are locally equidistant and is homogenous when its leaves are locally orbits of a Lie group acting by isometries. Homogenous foliations are metric foliations, but metric foliations need not be homogenous foliations. We prove that a homogenous three-sphere is naturally reductive if and only if all of its metric foliations are homogenous.
In this paper, we prove that the $3$-sphere endowed with an arbitrary Riemannian metric either contains at least two embedded minimal $2$-spheres or admits an optimal foliation by $2$-spheres. This generalizes recent results by Haslhofer-Ketover (Duke Math. J. 2019), where the existence of optimal foliations and minimal $2$-spheres has been established under the additional assumption that the metric is generic. In light of recent examples by Wang-Zhou, where min-max for some non-bumpy metrics on the 3-sphere produces higher multiplicities, our results are in a certain sense sharp.
In this paper I study the constant mean curvature surface in asymptotically flat 3-manifolds with general asymptotics. Under some weak condition, I prove that outside some compact set in the asymptotically flat 3-manifold with positive mass, the foliation of stable spheres of constant mean curvature is unique.
Using representations of Clifford algebras we construct indecomposable singular Riemannian foliations on round spheres, most of which are non-homogeneous. This generalizes the construction of non-homogeneous isoparametric hypersurfaces due to by Ferus, Karcher and Munzner.
For a singular Riemannian foliation $\mathcal{F}$ on a Riemannian manifold, a curve is called horizontal if it meets the leaves of $\mathcal{F}$ perpendicularly. For a singular Riemannian foliation $\mathcal{F}$ on a unit sphere $\mathbb{S}^{n}$, we show that if $\mathcal{F}$ is a polar foliation or if $\mathcal{F}$ is given by the orbits of an infinitesimally polar action, then the horizontal diameter of $\mathbb{S}^{n}$ is $π$, i.e., any two points in $\mathbb{S}^{n}$ can be connected by a horizontal curve of length $\leqπ$.
We give a proof by foliation that the cones over $\mathbb{S}^k \times \mathbb{S}^l$ minimize parametric elliptic functionals for each $k,\,l \geq 1$. We also analyze the behavior at infinity of the leaves in the foliations. This analysis motivates conjectures related to the existence and growth rates of nonlinear entire solutions to equations of minimal surface type that arise in the study of such functionals.
I will consider some questions related to Euler's work on cartography and its consequences, in which the foliations of the sphere by meridians and parallels play important roles.
We study half-spheres with small radii sitting on the boundary of a smooth bounded domain while meeting it orthogonally. Even though it is known that there exist families of CMC and Willmore type half-spheres near a nondegenerate critical point p of the domains boundaries mean curvature, it is unknown in both cases whether these provide a foliation of any deleted neighborhood of p. We prove that this is not guaranteed and establish a criterion in terms of the boundaries geometry that ensures or prevents the respective surfaces from providing such a foliation. This perhaps surprising phenomenon…
The survey is devoted to Toponogov's conjecture, that {\it if a complete simply connected Riemannian manifold with sectional curvature $\le 4$ and injectivity radius $\ge π/2$ has extremal diameter $π/2$, then it is isometric to CROSS}. In Section 1 the relations of problem with geodesic foliations of a round sphere are considered, but the proof of conjecture on this way is not complete. In Section 2 the proof based on recent results and methods for topology and volume of Blaschke manifolds is given.
In this paper, the existence and uniqueness of foliations by constant mean curvature spheres on asymptotically flat manifolds of nonzero ADM mass in all dimensions were established. (A similar result in the case of positive mass was obtained independently by G. Huisken and S. T. Yau, see the introduction of this paper and their paper in Inv. Math.)
In this note we study constant mean curvature surfaces in asymptotically flat 3-manifolds. We prove that, in an asymptotically flat 3-manifold with positive mass, stable spheres of given constant mean curvature outside a fixed compact subset are unique. Therefore we are able to conclude that there is a unique foliation of stable spheres of constant mean curvature in an asymptotically flat 3-manifold with positive mass.
Let $(M,g)$ be a 3-dimensional Riemannian manifold. The goal of the paper it to show that if $P_{0}\in M$ is a non-degenerate critical point of the scalar curvature, then a neighborhood of $P_{0}$ is foliated by area-constrained Willmore spheres. Such a foliation is unique among foliations by area-constrained Willmore spheres having Willmore energy less than $32π$, moreover it is regular in the sense that a suitable rescaling smoothly converges to a round sphere in the Euclidean three-dimensional space. We also establish generic multiplicity of foliations and the first multiplicity result for …
Motivated by the foliation by stable spheres with constant mean curvature constructed by Huisken-Yau, Metzger proved that every initial data set can be foliated by spheres with constant expansion (CE) if the manifold is asymptotically equal to the standard [t=0]-timeslice of the Schwarzschild solution. In this paper, we generalize his result to asymptotically flat initial data sets and weaken additional smallness assumptions made by Metzger. Furthermore, we prove that the CE-surfaces are in a well-defined sense (asymptotically) independent of time if the linear momentum vanishes.
In this paper, two sequences of minimal isoparametric hypersurfaces are constructed via representations of Clifford algebras. Based on these, we give estimates on eigenvalues of the Laplacian of the focal submanifolds of isoparametric hypersurfaces in unit spheres. This improves results of [TY13] and [TXY14]. Eells and Lemaire [EL83] posed a problem to characterize the compact Riemannian manifold M for which there is an eigenmap from M to S^n. As another application of our constructions, the focal maps give rise to many examples of eigenmaps from minimal isoparametric hypersurfaces to unit sph…
In this article, we show that, for any compact 3-manifold, there is a $C^{1}$ volume-minimizing one-dimensional foliation. More generally, we show the existence of mass-minimizing rectifiable sections of sphere bundles without isolated "pole points" in the base manifold. This same analysis is used to show that the examples, due to Sharon Pedersen, of potentially volume-minimizing rectifiable sections (rectifiable foliations) of the unit tangent bundle to $S^{2n+1}$ are not, in fact, volume minimizing.
We prove the existence and uniqueness of constant mean curvature foliations for initial data sets which are asymptotically flat satisfying the Regge-Teitelboim condition near infinity. It is known that the (Hamiltonian) center of mass is well-defined for manifolds satisfying this condition. We also show that the foliation is asymptotically concentric, and its geometric center is the center of mass. The construction of the foliation generalizes the results of Huisken-Yau, Ye, and Metzger, where strongly asymptotically flat manifolds and their small perturbations were studied.
In this paper, we are concerned with interactions between isoparametric theory and differential topology. Two foliations are called equivalent if there exists a diffeomorphism between the foliated manifolds mapping leaves to leaves. Using differential topology, we obtain several results towards the classification problem of isoparametric foliations up to equivalence. In particular, we show that each homotopy $n$-sphere has the "same" isoparametric foliations as the standard sphere $S^n$ has except for $n=4$, reducing the classification problem on homotopy spheres to that on the standard sphere…
In this paper we consider the uniqueness problem of the constant mean curvature spheres in asymptotically flat 3-manifolds. We require the metric have the form g_{ij}=δ_{ij}+h_{ij} with h_{ij}=O_{4}(r^{-1}) and R=O(r^{-3-τ}),τ>0. We do not require the metric to be close to Schwarzschild metric in any sense or to satisfy RT conditions. We prove that, when the mass is not 0, stable CMC spheres that separate a certain compact part from infinity satisfy the radius pinching estimate r_{1}\leq Cr_{0} , which in many cases is critical to prove the uniqueness of the CMC spheres. As applications of thi…
We provide a lower value for the volume of a unit vector field tangent to an antipodally Euclidean sphere $\mathbb{S}^2$ depending on the length of an ellipse determined by the indexes of its singularities. In addition, for minimizing vector fields having specific pair of indexes, we show that their image coincides with the image of minimally immersed Klein bottles.
A correspondence is established between a class of minimal immersed surfaces of $\mathbb{S}^3(2)$ and area-minimizing unit vector fields defined on the antipodally punctured unit sphere $\mathbb{S}^2\backslash\{N,S\}$. As a consequence, we establish a stability relation for Lawson cylinders in $\mathbb{S}^3(2)$.
Let $M_t$ be an isoparametric foliation on the unit sphere $(S^{n-1}(1),g^{\mathrm{st}})$ with $d$ principal curvature values. Using the spherical coordinates induced by $M_t$, we construct a Minkowski norm with the presentation $F=r\sqrt{2f(t)}$, which generalizes the notions of $(α,β)$-norm and $(α_1,α_2)$-norm. Using the technique of spherical local frame, we give an exact and explicit answer for the question when $F=r\sqrt{2f(t)}$ really defines a Minkowski norm. Using the similar technique, we study the Hessian isometry $Φ$ between two Minkowski norms induced by $M_t$, which preserves the…
We provide a lower value for the volume of a unit vector field tangent to an antipodally Euclidean sphere $\mathbb{S}^2$ depending on the length of an ellipse determined by the indexes of its singularities.
In 1996, Huisken-Yau showed that every three-dimensional Riemannian manifold can be uniquely foliated near infinity by stable closed CMC-surfaces if it is asymptotically equal to the (spatial) Schwarzschild solution and has positive mass. Their assumptions were later weakened by Metzger, Huang, Eichmair-Metzger and others. We further generalize these existence results in dimension three by proving that it is sufficient to assume asymptotic flatness and non-vanishing mass to conclude the existence and uniqueness of the CMC-foliation and explain why this seems to be the conceptually optimal resu…
We prove that the least area of the non-contractible immersed spheres is no more than $4π$ in any oriented compact manifold with dimension $n+2\leq 7$ which satisfies $R\geq 2$ and admits a map to $\mathbf S^2\times T^n$ with nonzero degree. We also prove a rigidity result for the equality case. This can be viewed as a generalization of the result in [2] to higher dimensions.
Hardt-Simon proved that every area-minimizing hypercone $\mathbf{C}$ having only an isolated singularity fits into a foliation of $\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ by smooth, area-minimizing hypersurfaces asymptotic to $\mathbf{C}$. In this paper we prove that if a stationary $n$-varifold $M$ in the unit ball $B_1 \subset \mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ lies sufficiently close to a minimizing quadratic cone (for example, the Simons' cone $\mathbf{C}^{3,3}$), then $\mathrm{spt} M \cap B_{1/2}$ is a $C^{1,α}$ perturbation of either the cone itself, or some leaf of its associated foliation. In particular, we show that singul…
We consider foliations of the whole three dimensional hyperbolic space H^3 by oriented geodesics. Let L be the space of all the oriented geodesics of H^3, which is a four dimensional manifold carrying two canonical pseudo-Riemannian metrics of signature (2,2). We characterize, in terms of these geometries of L, the subsets M in L that determine foliations of H^3. We describe in a similar way some distinguished types of geodesic foliations of H^3, regarding to which extent they are in some sense trivial in some directions: On the one hand, foliations whose leaves do not lie in a totally geodesi…
We prove the generalized Obata theorem on foliations. Let M be a complete Riemannian manifold with a foliation F of codimension $q>1$ and a bundle-like metric. Then $(M, F)$ is transversally isometric to the q-sphere of radius 1/c in (q+1)-dimensional Euclidean space endowed with the action of a discrete subgroup of the orthogonal group O(q), if and only if there exists a non-constant basic function f such that $\nabla_X df = -c^2 f X^\flat for all basic normal vector fields X, where c is a positive constant and \nabla is the connection on the normal bundle. By the generalized Obata theorem, w…
We consider the sub-Riemannian $3$-sphere $(\mathbb{S}^3,g_h)$ obtained by restriction of the Riemannian metric of constant curvature $1$ to the planar distribution orthogonal to the vertical Hopf vector field. It is known that $(\mathbb{S}^3,g_h)$ contains a family of spherical surfaces $\{\mathcal{S}_λ\}_{λ\geq 0}$ with constant mean curvature $λ$. In this work we first prove that the two closed half-spheres of $\mathcal{S}_0$ with boundary $C_0=\{0\}\times\mathbb{S}^1$ minimize the sub-Riemannian area among compact $C^1$ surfaces with the same boundary. We also see that the only $C^2$ solut…
In a previous paper, the authors showed that metrics which are asymptotic to Anti-de Sitter-Schwarzschild metrics with positive mass admit a unique foliation by stable spheres with constant mean curvature. In this paper we extend that result to all asymptotically hyperbolic metrics for which the trace of the mass term is positive. We do this by combining the Kazdan-Warner obstructions with a theorem due to De Lellis and Müller.
We study curvature functionals for immersed 2-spheres in a compact, three-dimensional Riemannian manifold M. Under the assumption that the sectional curvature of M is strictly positive, we prove the existence of a smoothly immersed sphere minimizing the L^{2} integral of the second fundamental form. Assuming instead that the sectional curvature is less than or equal to 2, and that there exists a point in M with scalar curvature bigger than 6, we obtain a smooth 2-sphere minimizing the integral of 1/4|H|^{2} +1, where H is the mean curvature vector.
We give a sharp upper bound for the area of a minimal two-sphere in a three-manifold (M,g) with positive scalar curvature. If equality holds, we show that the universal cover of (M,g) is isometric to a cylinder.
We prove existence and uniqueness of foliations by stable spheres with constant mean curvature for 3-manifolds which are asymptotic to Anti-de Sitter-Schwarzschild metrics with positive mass. These metrics arise naturally as spacelike timeslices for solutions of the Einstein equation with a negative cosmological constant.
We propose a new foliation of asymptotically Euclidean initial data sets by 2-spheres of constant spacetime mean curvature (STCMC). The leaves of the foliation have the STCMC-property regardless of the initial data set in which the foliation is constructed which asserts that there is a plethora of STCMC 2-spheres in a neighborhood of spatial infinity of any asymptotically flat spacetime. The STCMC-foliation can be understood as a covariant relativistic generalization of the CMC-foliation suggested by Huisken and Yau. We show that a unique STCMC-foliation exists near infinity of any asymptotica…
Given a closed manifold $M$ and a vector bundle $ξ$ of rank $n$ over $M$, by gluing two copies of the disc bundle of $ξ$, we can obtain a closed manifold $D(ξ, M)$, the so-called double manifold. In this paper, we firstly prove that each sphere bundle $S_r(ξ)$ of radius $r>0$ is an isoparametric hypersurface in the total space of $ξ$ equipped with a connection metric, and for $r>0$ small enough, the induced metric of $S_r(ξ)$ has positive Ricci curvature under the additional assumptions that $M$ has a metric with positive Ricci curvature and $n\geq3$. As an application, if $M$ admits a metric …
The focal sets of isoparametric hypersurfaces in spheres with g = 4 are all Willmore submanifolds, being minimal but mostly non-Einstein ([TY1], [QTY]). Inspired by A.Gray's view, the present paper shows that, these focal sets are all A- manifolds but rarely Ricci parallel, except possibly for the only unclassified case. As a byproduct, it gives infinitely many simply-connected examples to the problem 16.56 (i) of Besse concerning generalizations of the Einstein condition.
An orbit-like foliation is a singular foliation on a complete Riemannian manifold $M$ whose leaves are locally equidistant (i.e., a singular Riemannian foliation) and (transversely) infinitesimally homogenous. This class of singular foliation contains not only the classe of partion of the space into orbits of isometric actions, but also infinite many non homogenous examples and in particular the partition of $M$ into orbits of a proper groupoid. In this paper we prove a version of Kondrakov Embedding Theorem and an analogous Principle of Symmetric Criticality of Palais for basic funcions of or…
We extend the results of our recent preprint [arXiv: 1811.00515] into higher dimensions $n \geq 4$. For minimizing harmonic maps $u\in W^{1,2}(Ω,\mathbb{S}^2)$ from $n$-dimensional domains into the two dimensional sphere we prove: (1) An extension of Almgren and Lieb's linear law, namely \[\mathcal{H}^{n-3}(\textrm{sing} u) \le C \int_{\partial Ω} |\nabla_T u|^{n-1} \,d\mathcal{H}^{n-1};\] (2) An extension of Hardt and Lin's stability theorem, namely that the size of singular set is stable under small perturbations in $W^{1,n-1}$ norm of the boundary.
This paper addresses pure gauge questions in the study of (asymptotically) de Sitter spacetimes. We construct global solutions to the eikonal equation on de Sitter, whose level sets give rise to double null foliations, and give detailed estimates for the structure coefficients in this gauge. We show two results which are relevant for the foliations used in the stability problem of the expanding region of Schwarzschild de Sitter spacetimes [Schlue (2016)]: (i) Small perturbations of round spheres on the cosmological horizons lead to spheres that pinch off at infinity. (ii) Globally well behaved…
The central idea of the proof is to show that a minimal flow v on a compact 3-manifold M implies the existence of a codimension one foliation F on it, which is transverse to the flow. If M is the 3-sphere, Novikov's theorem applies to show that one of the leaves of F is a compact surface X. It is now easy to derive a contradiction. The foliation is achieved by an induction procedure in which the manifold M is partitioned into spaces called 'tubes', each of which is homeomorphic to a closed hollow cylinder. These cylinders are, in turn, 'filled in' with closed discs, each of which has its bound…
For $n \geq 1$, the twistor space $\mathfrak{Z}(\mathbb{S}^{2n})$ of the conformal $2n$-sphere is biholomorphic to the Zariski closure, taken in the complex Grassmannian manifold $\mathbf{G}(n+1, 2n+2)$, of the set of graphs of skew-symmetric linear endomorphism of $\mathbb{C}^{n+1}$. We use this fact to describe a natural stratification of the twistor space $\mathfrak{Z}(\mathbb{S}^{2n})$ with $n \geq 3$, in terms of what we have called {\it generalised complex orthogonal Stiefel manifolds} of $\mathbb{C}^{n+1}$. In particular, the twistor space $\mathfrak{Z}(\mathbb{S}^{6})$ is biholomorphic…
